Tag Archives: Wild Mustard Plant

It’s a plant seemingly as ubiquitous as traffic in Los Angeles. Our urban landscape with its intermittent open space and roadside patches, comprised often only of mere handfuls of dirt, conspire to support the tenacious Wild Mustard plant. This plant is not native to California and was actually introduced by Spanish Rancheros to support the growing cattle industry. The wild mustard arrived to compensate for overgrazing of native grasslands fueled by increasing numbers of cows. No longer consumed by cattle, this invasive species has run wild in Los Angeles’ Mediterranean climate, consuming the landscape at any chance it is given.